Video Performance 2020

First shown during the height of the corona virus pandemic, Nezaket Ekici’s performance “Handgestus” explores ‘hands’ as both a timely site of sanitation, and also a broader religious gesture with spiritual and artistic importance. The camera follows Ekici as she wanders through the Abbot Gallery of Schloss Corvey (also known as the Princely Abbey of Corvey), a former Benedictine abbey and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Germany. Hung in this gallery are the many portraits of Benedictine Apts in chronological order since the monastery’s founding in the 9th century. In the center of the room, there are 4 clear bowls of water (make-shift handwashing stations), each one at a different height level. The performance unfolds as she moves from bowl to bowl, dipping her hands in the water. An once sacred, but also perpetually common and banal, is now suddenly political in the context of our global pandemic. With each ritual washing, she turns toward the paintings and mimics the hand gestures of the depicted figures. Some are folded in prayer, others raised towards heaven in benediction. Her hands, like theirs, become symbolic agents—conduits of meaning, shaped by time, culture, and crisis. Schloss Corvey, with its Carolingian-era roots and long ecclesiastical history, offers a charged setting: religious portraits, each immortalized in stillness, are posed with their hands in silent gestures that once conveyed authority, piety, or contemplation. These portraits do not merely depict individuals—they archive postures of power, prayer, and presence. They stand as existential postures of once guiding religious lights in the human world. Through them, others realized their own fidelity to Christ, and reached for the sublimity of the heavens. Ekici’s interest in hands also speaks to their communicative necessity. When one exclaims, or speaks sadly, one’s hands almost inevitably change accordingly. Sometimes they are raised in anger, other times, softly folded in deference. This non-verbal language, which shows through interpersonal sign a dialogic and intimate illustration of one’s inner soul—becomes a focal point through which Ekici observes the existential within religious practice. Why do they fold their hands in prayer? To whom, does that sign speak? How do these small, subconscious gestures show our adoration, or sorrow to one another? Handgestus thus becomes a study of embodied memory in one’s very hands. It looks at the dirt and soot between the fingers, the cracks and ridges which are sullied by work, and connects it to our undying struggle for cleanliness that is both spiritual and common. The work draws a quiet connection between the everyday and the eternal, between the clinical act of sanitation and the transcendent power of gesture. Ekici reminds us that hands not neutral: they build, bless, protest, protect, and perform. In pandemic times, they were surveilled and sanitized, yet throughout history they have been carriers of spirit and expression. (Text By: Jono Wang Chu)

4 Clear Bowls, Water in Pitcher, Costume, Soap Gemälde: Braunschweiger Hofmaler Tobias Querfurt Auswahl aus der Äbtegalerie des Unesco-Weltkulturerbes Schloss Corvey (Höxter) 1. Kirchenpatron St. Stephanus (Stirnseite) 2. NO. I Abt Adalhard 822-826 3. NO. II Abt Warin 826-856 4 NO. XII Abt Liodolf 965-983 5. NO. XVI Abt Druthmar 1015-1046 6. NO. XXI Abt Friedrich 1080-1082 7. NO. XXIX Abt Konrad 1174-1189 8. NO. XVIII Abt Arnold 1050-1055 9 NO. XV Abt Walo 1011-1015 10. NO. XXXVII

Video Duration: 20:58min

Camera and video editing: Branka Pavlovic Photography: Andreas Dammertz Technology/assistant: Julian David Bolivar Carpenter: Matthias Wortmann Sound/composition: Janja Loncar Costume design: Nezaket Ekici Tailor: Süleymann Vocals: Nezaket Ekici Paintings: Selection from the abbot gallery of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Corvey Castle (Höxter) A co-production with the Tarabya Cultural Academy Thanks to: Tarabya Cultural Academy (Alumni Fund) UNESCO World Heritage Site Corvey Castl